The invention concerns an absorbent disposable article, such as in particular a diaper including, in part, an absorbent body having a liquid-permeable protective sheet on one side and a porous cover layer on an opposite side.
Such articles are known, for example, from German Published Patent Application 19 14 179 and European Patent 00 59 015 81.
In both cases, individual sheets are laid up as barrier layers, which either are bonded only on the edge of the disposable article to the porous cover layer (GPPA. 19 14 179) or, for edge reinforcement, are also additionally bonded to the cover layer at further locations disposed, respectively, at a distance from one another, distributed over the entire surface of the barrier layer (EP 0 059 015 B1).
The drawback of these barrier layers consists in that they represent in principle in each case an independent layer, which is bonded to the cover layer solely in individual spots. Because of that, these barrier layers must exhibit, i.a., a thickness which imparts to them an independently sufficient strength. Therefore, these barrier layers require a relatively large amount of material. In the case of the class of mass-produced articles, this already is of consequence from the standpoint of cost. Also, those layers are unpleasantly stiff in wear.
It is, moreover, already known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,799,167 to produce the corresponding barrier layers at the edge of an absorbent disposable article through impregnation of the porous cover layer with a liquid-impermeable material. The shortcoming of this embodiment consists in that again a relatively higher expenditure of material is required in order to achieve an assured imperviousness of the layer by complete filling of the pores of the cover layer. As a result of the complete penetration into the pores in the course of impregnation of the liquid-impermeable filler materials, the cover layer is quite hard and relatively stiff. In the cases where the disposable article to be produced comes with the cover layer in contact with the skin of the person wearing the disposable article on his or her body, this is perceived as unpleasant; then, in the case of disposable articles to be worn on the body, a porous cover layer directly adjacent the skin is made from a soft, pleasant to wear material. These pleasant to wear properties, naturally, are not possessed by a liquid-impermeable filler material.
In the case of a further absorbent disposable article, known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,604,422, a liquid-impermeable coating can, i.a., be applied to the porous cover layer. When, on the other hand, applying such a coating, as again according to U.S. Pat. No. 3,799,167, in most cases, an undesirably deep penetration by the liquid-impermeable material being applied occurs. Too deep a penetration of the material forming the barrier layer is undesirable also for reasons already enumerated in the above-cited U.S. Pat. No. 3,799,167.